Mr. Rawles,
I have been working on a retreat that I will be moving to later in the year. Naturally, construction is taking up a large amount of my time. My family is on-board for the retreat.
I need help in the area of an Operations and Security Manual. Is there anything that you know of that would be a starting place rather than from the ground up? I know there are a lot of things that I would miss out on if I started [by myself] from the ground up, and not know it until it’s too late. I purchased the “Rawles Gets You Ready” preparedness course [1] and I would have missed the boat on food storage if I did not have that as a reference.
Any direction would be appreciated. Thank you, – Craig in Arkansas
JWR Replies: I can’t recommend a stand-alone reference, but I can recommend an abbreviated version of the list of “musts” for your retreat bookshelf::
- The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery. Sasquatch Books. (Get the Ninth or later edition.) This book is 845 pages of valuable ‘how to’ country survival knowledge.
- Nuclear War Survival Skills, by Cresson H. Kearney
- American Red Cross First Aid
- Where There is No Doctor, by David Werner
- Where There is No Dentist, by Murray Dickson
- Emergency War Surgery (NATO handbook) Dr. Martin Fackler, et al.
- The Ultimate Sniper, by Maj. John L. Plaster
And, at the risk of sounding self-serving, I also recommend my novel “Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse”. [2] It provide a detailed description of what might be needed to secure and operate a self-sufficient rural retreat in a protracted societal collapse.